A Hill of Beans

Coffee beans are, in my opinion, one God's most wonderful creations. There's nothing like a piping hot mug of liquid wonderfulness to comfort and energize first thing in the morning. Many of you know that Guatemala produces some of the best coffee in the world.  In fact, we have lots of friends who regularly travel all over Central and South America and could get coffee anywhere, but they specifically request coffee from Huehue because ours is just that amazing.  We're surrounded by coffee plants here, and this time of year they're so pretty covered in shiny, green leaves and red, ripe beans. I know some of you have toured a coffee plantation before to learn about the process of growing, harvesting, and roasting coffee.  It's really pretty interesting. But there's a side to the story that no one ever tells...a gut-wrenching side that infuriates me every January.  

Meet Marina.  She lives in Tuipic and is a faithful member of the church out there.  She's an absolute sweetheart.  Loving InDeed has grown substantially since its inception, and I desperately need an assistant. Marina is a perfect fit. I approached her about it the other day, and she was pretty excited by the opportunity.  But there's one little glitch. This time of year is coffee picking time.  In another couple of weeks, Marina will leave for three months with countless other men, women, and children to harvest coffee for the wealthy plantation owners.  I asked Marina to describe that job for me, even though I knew I wasn't going to like her answer. 

"You work from sun up to sun down six days a week," she said.  Pay is based on the weight of the beans you harvest.  If the beans are perfectly mature, a good picker can harvest 100 pounds in a day.   Each bean has to be individually separated from the stem so as to not damage the tree.   It extremely time consuming.  Since the owners want as much work out of them as possible, they are provided with a place to sleep right there on site. It's a large, drafty room filled with wooden boards like the one Marina is sitting on in the picture above, only smaller.  No mattress, no blankets, no pillow...just boards propped up by sawhorses or rocks.  People generally do this from mid January to mid March or April.  I don't think I could stand it for more than a day or two.  Now comes the part that really makes me angry.  Do you know what Marina will get paid to do this?

Coffee beans drying in the sun on someone's roof

Before I tell you, let me break it down a little bit; after all, no one buys 100 pounds of coffee at one time. So how much do you pay for a pound of coffee beans? Maybe around $7 to $15 a pound, depending on the store and the brand.  So let's go with the low end of that...$7 a pound.  I know there is a hierarchy of people who work in coffee production--the plantation owners, the harvesters, the roasters, the exporters, the retailers...and of all those people, the harvesters are going to make the least amount of money. But how many of those 700 pennies per bag of coffee would you guess goes to the person who picked that pound?   The answer is a whopping 5 pennies.  Less than 1%.  Marina will work from sun up to sun down for around $5, and then have to spend some of that to buy food and something to drink.  The plantation owners provide nothing.  In fact, some owners even charge them to sleep on the boards on their property.  It's sickening.  I'm sure you can use your imagination and figure out what happens to women and children in places like that. I've personally known kids as young as 8 years old who've been sent off alone to work the plantations. I'm not telling you this to make you feel guilty every time you take a sip of coffee.  I'm telling you this simply to share with you some of the difficulties my friends face here just trying to get by.  Imagine working 10+ hours a day for 6 days and earning $28 (if you eat nothing but tortillas and drink nothing but water).

So what should we do about it?  Honestly, I have no idea.  Buy fair trade coffee?  Maybe.  I'm not even sure how fair that is.  I wish I knew how to fix the system, but I don't.  This is one of those times that I can't possibly throw all the starfish back in the water.  Bunches of my Loving InDeed moms are leaving their kids with grandma to go work the fincas (plantations) for the next three months. Schools in indigenous areas will be half full at best because of the number of school age kids who will leave to pick beans instead of going to school.  I cannot possibly provide them all with enough money so that they don't have to go.  But maybe I can make it better for Marina.  I can pick one starfish out of the bunch and give her a break.  I still need an assistant.  It's a paying job, and she's still perfect for it. Pray for wisdom.